


Look on Both Indifferently

by rabidchild67



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:46:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal is kidnapped and left in a walk-in freezer to die. The baddies are streaming live video for his friends to watch – can they find him before it’s too late?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look on Both Indifferently

Peter Burke checked his watch as he got off the elevator on the 21st floor of the federal building and grimaced. 9:00 – he was uncharacteristically late. But they had just closed three cold mortgage fraud cases, this coming weekend was Memorial Day, and he felt that playing a little hooky wasn’t going to hurt much. As he glanced around at the still half empty bullpen, he could tell his team felt the same way. He smiled as he noticed Blake close down the website of a travel agency – he was clearly planning his upcoming vacation, but didn’t want the boss to see, which reminded Peter he ought to check up on his own plans for later in the summer. He dropped a small care package from El off on Neal’s desk – he loved her blueberry muffins – and headed for his office.

He fired up his laptop, took off his jacket and glanced out over the city – the sky was clear and blue, the weather was still pleasant and summer’s humidity had not yet taken the city in its grip. He resolved to meet his wife for lunch and sat himself down at his desk to check his emails.

His cell phone chirped and he glanced over at it. Sara Ellis it said, and he picked it up. “Peter Burke,” he answered.

“Hi, Peter, it’s Sara. You’re going to think I’m silly, but…is Neal there?”

Peter looked out over the bullpen. Most of the team had arrived by now, but the bag of muffins stood untouched on Neal’s desk, and his computer screen was still dark. “He’s not,” he answered.

“That’s strange. He went out for a run early this morning, and I fell back to sleep.” She sounded embarrassed, like sharing this detail was betraying something. “I just woke up, and he’s not here. It’s been almost three hours.”

“Huh,” Peter said, frowning.

“I suppose I could have missed him, but I’m sure he would have woken me before he left.”

Peter noticed a flicker of movement on his computer screen out of the corner of his eye. A new email had arrived – from Neal. This Morning the subject line read, and Peter opened it.

“I called his cell, but he’s not picking up,” Sara continued.

The email from Neal had no text – just a URL. Peter clicked through to a website where a video feed began to load.

“So I was wondering if you’d heard from him, or maybe picked him up to go into the office? Or something…” Sara’s voice trailed off.

“Sara?” Peter said, standing, sudden panic coloring his voice. “I’m going to ask you to stay where you are. I’m sending someone to pick you up and bring you downtown.”

The video feed showed a small, windowless room. The camera was apparently anchored to the ceiling, and it pointed down at the floor on the wall opposite so that nearly the entire room was visible. There were empty racks lined up across the room with what appeared to be food or groceries piled up on some of them; a heavy door was closed in the corner. A person was slumped on the floor against the wall opposite the camera, unconscious, a stream of blood trickling down from a gash on his forehead.

It was Neal.

\----

Peter and the team sat in the conference room, the video feed up and running on a monitor at the front of the room. The shock of the initial discovery had worn off for most, and they had all sprung into action; Jones and Diana were chasing down what leads they could discover from the email, and crime scene techs dispatched to Neal’s apartment were looking for evidence. Hughes had made it clear that no stone would remain unturned – Neal was part of the team and they would spare no effort. But Peter was filled with a deep sense of foreboding – his worry for Neal’s safety had never been higher. The suddenness of this incident, the cruel way it was conveyed to them, disturbed him the most – what sort of mind conceived of such a thing?

There had been no ransom or other demand so far, but the need to act was pressing. The space where Neal was being kept was clearly a refrigeration unit, and there was no telling how cold it was there or how badly Neal was injured. He had not moved in the last hour, and Peter found it difficult to conduct the meeting and keep his back to the monitor.

“Run it down,” Peter began, pointedly ignoring the image of the unmoving man on the monitor. “What do we know?”

“We’re getting nowhere with the video feed,” Jones began. “It’s being bounced off half the routers in Eastern Europe before it streams here – it’s a dead end. The email was sent from Neal’s phone. I’ve put in a request with his mobile carrier to track its GPS but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. We may need a court order.”

“Keep trying, and call Nate Jensen over at the US Attorney’s office if you need to – he owes me a favor. What is up with his tracking anklet?”

Diana piped up. “The Marshals say there’s been no movement, no record of its removal, nothing. It’s transmitting data, but still says he’s at home.”

Peter glanced at the screen, and the sight of Neal lying there made his stomach drop again. “That’s impossible. Something or someone is manipulating the signal. Find out how.” She nodded.

Blake poked his head into the room. “Miss Ellis is here, sir. I put her in your office.”

“Thank you.” He looked at the assembled agents. “I don’t have to tell you that a member of our team is in real danger. We don’t know where he is or who’s taken him. According to the bureau docs, we’ve got maybe eight to twelve hours before he dies of hypothermia. There is no other case today, no other job to do.”

“We’ll bring him home, Boss,” Diana said with a confidence Peter wished he could share. Things were dire, they had almost nothing to go on and Neal could die before their eyes while they tried to figure it all out. He dismissed them and chanced another glance at Neal onscreen once they had all gone.

“Bring him home,” he repeated, running a shaking hand through his hair.

He took a deep breath and entered his office through the adjoining door to question Sara. She was the last person to see Neal, and she might know something that could help in the investigation.

Sara looked up from her seat in front of his desk, eyes wide. She looked scared. “Peter, no one’s talking to me. Where’s Neal?”

Peter took his seat across from her, glanced at his laptop and then back at her. “Tell me about this morning again.”

“Peter, please, what’s going on?” she began, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t know how she’d take the news, and he needed to hear her story before she forgot any details. “Sara, please.”

“OK. The alarm went off at 6:30. Neal got dressed and went out for a run. I stayed in bed and must have fallen asleep. I woke up after 9:00 and he wasn’t there.”

“Did he say anything before he left? Anything at all?”

“He asked me if I wanted to join him.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said I didn’t think my Manolo Blahniks had the right sole for a quick jog through the park.”

“And he said nothing else.”

“He kissed me goodbye.”

He saw there were tears in her eyes, but he had to continue. “You’re certain he didn’t come back?” Peter knew he hadn’t – he was still wearing his workout gear in the video, but he had to ask.

“It would have woken me. He would have woken me. I’m sure.”

“How has he been acting lately – has he seemed nervous or upset?”

“Peter, he’s the world’s best conman, if he was upset he knows how to hide it. Please, you’re scaring me – tell me what’s happened.”

Peter took a deep breath before answering. “Neal’s been kidnapped.”

The tears brimming in Sara’s eyes spilled down her cheeks when she blinked. “No.”

“I received an email this morning with what appears to be a live video feed.” He turned his laptop so that she could see it. She stared at it, shock written plainly on her face.

“Wh-what is this? Is he alive?”

“He appears to be, but he’s been like that since I got the email. We’re doing everything we can to locate him.”

She peered closely at the screen. “Where is he? What is that place?”

“We think it’s a walk-in refrigeration unit or freezer.”

Sara looked up at him, alarmed. “He could freeze to death,” she whispered.

“I know that.” Peter’s voice was low, but he couldn’t stop it from breaking. “So we’re going to find him before that happens.”

\----

Peter sat with Sara at the small round table in his office, both of them staring fixedly at the video of Neal. The investigation continued, with Peter running things from there, but she refused to go home, and he didn’t want to leave her alone, either. He glanced at his watch – it was noon already.

“Did you see that?” Sara grasped the laptop’s screen. “I think he moved.”

Peter looked closer and saw that Neal was indeed moving. He breathed a sigh of relief that at least his partner was alive. Voices in the bullpen were also raised as some of the other agents noticed, and the development seemed to cheer some of them, spur others on to double their efforts to find Neal.

Peter and Sara watched as Neal pushed himself up into a seated position, reached a hand up and ran it over his eyes and forehead, wincing as he touched the injury to his head. He blinked hard a few times, as if trying to focus on his surroundings, then folded his arms against his chest in reaction to the temperature in the room. He glanced around, and Peter thought he could almost read Neal’s thoughts as he analyzed the situation he found himself in.

Pulling his feet under him, Neal pushed himself up and stood. He swayed slightly, grabbed onto a nearby rack for support, and when he was steady on his feet, he headed toward the door with stumbling steps. The camera’s angle was such that only the left half of the door was visible; the right side, where the latch must have been, was not, and so Neal was out of sight for a few seconds. When he came back into view, it was with a suddenness and speed as if he’d been propelled in that direction – something had driven him from the door.

Neal's next move was to investigate each wall and corner of the room, starting with the far corner – Peter thought of it as “northwest” for no reason – taking stock of the materials that were in the room and any other features. He headed to the southwest corner and was again momentarily out of sight. Peter imagined he was moving beneath the camera now, and thought it would only be a matter of minutes before he’d spot it. Sure enough, the camera juddered slightly and a mop of unruly dark hair appeared on camera as Neal inspected it and its wiring. He peered into it, and Peter noticed that the gash on his head was deep and jagged, and there was a nasty bruise blossoming beneath Neal’s left eye. He left the shot once again and reappeared a minute later, his circuit apparently completed.

“What’s he doing?” Sara asked, pointing at something in Neal’s right hand – a newspaper. He opened all the sections and began to crumple up the sheets of paper, shoving them inside the light windbreaker he wore.

“He’s using the newspaper as insulation. It’ll trap his body heat next to his skin, keep him warm.”

Neal then went over to the wall opposite the camera, slid the rack that stood there aside and pulled something from his pocket that he must have found on his tour of the room – a large black marker. He removed its top and began to write on the wall in block letters.

“I AM TRAPPED” he wrote, followed by: “CALL PETER BURKE, FBI” and Peter’s cell number. Then he wrote the dimensions of the room: 20’x24’, the temperature: 33°F and a company name: Sorenson Equipment. Glancing back at the camera thoughtfully, he bent down and wrote down one more thing that sent a chill through Peter: “DOOR IS WIRED.”

“What’s he mean, the door is wired?” Sara said. “Does it have a timer or alarm or something?”

“No, he means it’s wired to explode,” Peter replied, rushing out of the office and shouting for Diana. On screen, Neal hunkered down next to the wall, hugging his legs to himself and burying his face in his arms to keep warm.

\----

Another two hours passed and Peter watched as Neal did jumping jacks and a series of pushups to keep warm. His cheeks were red, flushed, and Peter could see his breath hanging in the air. Sara, finding the tension of watching to be too much, sat in the kitchenette with an untouched cup of coffee.

“Hang in there, buddy,” Peter said to the screen, and looked up as he noticed someone standing in the doorway.

It was Diana.

“Did the name Sorenson Equipment turn anything up?” he asked her.

“They’re the biggest manufacturer of custom refrigeration systems in the country. Jones is headed over to their offices in Queens to get a list of installations of units the size Neal’s in.”

“Good, maybe we can narrow it down to a few likely places. They can’t have taken him far.”

“But we’re getting nowhere on tracing the signal anomalies with Neal’s anklet, or the video stream. So I, uh, called for backup.”

“Backup?”

Diana stepped aside, and Peter caught a glimpse of Mozzie standing nervously in the doorway to the White Collar unit.

“Well, he’s dating the world’s premier hacker, I figure he might have a few tricks up his sleeve. Besides, he deserves to know what’s going on with Neal.”

“No, that’s fine. Good thinking - bring him up.”

\----

Peter watched surreptitiously as Moz glared at the monitors from the equipment the Cyber Division had set him up with in the conference room. He could tell Moz was frustrated. Tracking the video stream was the dead end they’d feared it would be, even with Moz’s help. Every path he took to trace it led nowhere. He next turned to the source of the tracking anklet data, and managed to isolate the node where the signal was being manipulated, but he couldn’t figure out exactly how it was being changed, or how it was being routed into the monitoring network at the US Marshal Service.

He kept the browser window with the footage of Neal minimized in the corner of the screen, and Peter noticed that he’d open it up from time to time as if gaining some sort of strength from it. Neal had lately given up the calisthenics to keep warm and just sat against the wall in a miserable huddle, staring at the floor.

“This is hopeless, and I’m useless,” Moz muttered to himself and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He made a series of calls, hanging up after what couldn’t have been more than a ring or two, then waited for a call to ring through on his own phone three times, then stopped. Satisfied, he called the number back and waited for an answer.

“I need your help,” he said with no preamble to whoever had answered – Peter suspected it must be Sally – and explained the situation to her as quickly as he could.

Peter felt no guilt for eavesdropping on the conversation – if it got them some progress, then he’d gladly leave his manners at the door. “That will take time we don’t have,” Mozzie was saying bleakly.

There was silence for several minutes and then Moz whispered, “I don’t know how I’ll thank you,” and then hung up. He opened up the browser with Neal’s image on it and called to Peter without turning his head. “That was Sally. She’ll be here in thirty minutes. Please make sure she gets through security unmolested.”

“Thanks, Moz,” Peter said.

“If anyone can help find him, it’s her.”

\----

One hour later, Peter led a status meeting that was meant to catch Sally up on the situation. Peter hoped her fresh eyes on the problem would provide them with new insights, even if giving her access to FBI technical resources was on its face a bad idea. Hughes, surprisingly, had not blinked when Peter made the request. “We can monitor everything she does?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Peter replied – the Cyber Division had assured him they could keep up with her.

“Bring him home, Peter,” Hughes replied, and headed back to his own office.

Peter stood at the front of the room, the monitor at his back again, a silent reminder of what they were working for. Neal hadn’t moved in nearly thirty minutes, ratcheting up Peter’s anxiety, but he pushed forward – somewhere, the team would find the right piece to the puzzle, he knew it.

“OK, what have we got so far?” Peter began.

“I thought I could trace the code that’s spoofing the Marshal’s tracking system, but had no luck,” Moz began. All attempts to delete it have failed, it’s replicating itself throughout the node it was found on. It’s very specifically tied to Neal’s tracking data and no one else’s, which is maybe significant, or maybe not, but how someone got access to the information at that level of granularity, I have no idea. There is a signature in the code, but it’s no one I know of. It might lead to a suspect down the line, but for now it’s untraceable. It’s a dead end.” Sally put a hand on his arm and squeezed as he finished, Peter noticed, and he would’ve found it cute if his head wasn’t about to explode.

“OK, anything else with the video stream itself?” Peter said, ticking off a mental checklist.

“Nothing more,” Diana replied. “It’s a standard video stream, using the expected compression technologies – everything out of the box. The only thing we can’t do is trace the damn thing back to a source.”

“Shit. Jones, did you get anywhere with the people over at Sorenson Equipment?”

“They just sent me their customer data. There are more than 250 freezers of that approximate size installed in the Tri-State area – everywhere from butcher shops to grocery stores to restaurants. We’ll never be able to check them all in time.”

“Have you mapped them out?” Sally asked.

“I could,” Jones said. He manipulated a few things on his laptop and, a few minutes later, hooked it up to the display hanging on the wall. On a map of the area, tiny red pins appeared wherever a refrigeration unit was installed.

“That video – it’s live for all you know, right?”

“Yes,” Peter replied.

“Which means the camera has to be hooked up to a system that’s on the internet. Video files are very large, and very specific; they’re easy to find in a given data flow no matter what.”

“We haven’t been able to trace the transmission at all,” Diana reminded her.

“But now we know where to look for it,” Sally answered. She pointed at the screen and its little red pins. “Seems to me that not a lot of the places where you’ll find these freezers are likely to be streaming live video feeds, period. If we can hone in on the communications traffic that’s coming out of those sites, we can sift through it and look for live video protocols. I assure you, there won’t be that many.”

“We’ll need a court order,” Peter said.

“Then you’d better get started.”

“And a whole lot of processing power,” Moz pointed out.

“Perhaps the NSA guys on the 14th floor will lend us some,” Sally said, a smile playing around her lips.

“What NSA guys on the 14th floor?” Peter said, pulling out his cell phone to make a few calls.

\----

Peter paced in his office while Sally and Moz worked in the conference room, a cadre of not-NSA guys keeping careful tabs on what they were doing, recording every keystroke and line of code they used. Sara sat in Peter’s own chair, her head lying across an outstretched arm, staring at Peter’s laptop.

“We’re coming, Neal, we’ll be there soon. Hang on, OK?” Sara was whispering to the screen, and Peter tried not to hear.

He paced some more.

“What…what’s he doing?” Sara said, pointing to the screen.

Peter crossed the room in two strides to see Neal standing up and removing his jacket. “Shit, SHIT!” he yelled, but couldn’t take his eyes from the screen. “Don’t do it, Neal, come on!”

“What? Why is he doing that?” By now, Neal had removed his sneakers and track pants and was pacing in a tight circle, his lips moving.

“What’s going on?” Moz said, attracted by Peter’s outburst.

“Neal’s taking his clothes off,” Sara said, tears in her voice. “Why? Why would he do that?

Moz traded a look with Peter. They both knew this was not good. “In cases of severe hypothermia,” Moz said, “as the brain shuts down, people hallucinate that they are overheating. Half the people that die of exposure are found almost completely undressed.”

“Oh my God,” Sara said, covering her mouth with her hand.

Peter looked at the screen, his jaw clenched so tightly he thought he might crack a tooth. He turned on his heel and went into the conference room. “Tell me you’ve got SOMETHING!” he said to Sally, his fists clenched so tightly he drew blood.

“It’s still compiling,” she told him. “Just give it a few minutes.”

“He doesn’t have a few minutes, Sally,” he said, his voice low.

All she could do was look back sympathetically – he knew that. But an entire day of ineffectually trying to save his best friend was beginning to take its toll. He needed to DO something – fix something, arrest someone, move something forward. But he couldn’t. All he could do was sit and wait for others to run down the investigation and watch as Neal slowly froze to death before his eyes. The urge to hit something was suddenly strong.

He turned, walked calmly out of the conference room, down the stairs and towards the long hallway to the records room in the corner of the 21st floor. He did not stop until he was facing the shelving on the far wall, where he stood for a minute, staring at the endless rows of file boxes. He rested his forearm on a shelf and leaned his head on it, and let the tears he’d been holding back all day finally fall.

Peter had never been so afraid in his entire life, and part of him wondered why. It wasn’t as if he’d never had to deal with an agent of his being in a life or death situation. Hell, Neal himself took too many chances with his own safety on a seemingly weekly basis. But in those situations, there was a choice involved, an active decision made to risk one’s life in service to the goal at hand, whether it was saving an innocent victim or bringing down a dangerous criminal.

What was getting to him this time was the total lack of control, the utter helplessness he felt, and…”No, no,” he whispered to himself, as if denying it aloud made a difference. The truth was that he’d never been so certain of a bad outcome before. He no longer had faith that Neal would survive this – that he’d be able to save him – and it scared the shit out of him.

Peter Burke saved people – it was so much a part of his identity, he almost couldn’t remember a time when it wasn’t. When he was six he saved a tiny mouse from being fed to Tommy Warner’s pet snake that he’d brought to school. He stopped traffic on the Palisades Parkway once to usher a mother duck and her babies across the road. It didn’t take a shrink to figure out the real reason he’d entered the FBI. So for him to be unable to find the man who’d become his closest friend in such a short time – and to have basically given up – was unbearable. He felt as if he’d killed Neal as effectively as if he’d locked him in that freezer.

But he couldn’t help it.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” he whispered to Neal, shaking his head.

There was the sound of a throat clearing behind him. “Boss?” Diana said.

He swiped the tears off his face with his fingers and turned his head. “Yes?”

“We’ve found something,” she said, and if he didn’t think she’d slug him, he’d have picked her up and kissed her.

They rushed to the conference room, where a list of thirteen locations was displayed onscreen.

“What – what have we got,” Peter asked, his voice gaining strength as he took in the information.

“These are the locations with streaming video,” Sally told him.

“It’s still too many,” Diana pointed out.

“Well, we can rule out the supermarkets,” Jones suggested. “They’ll have people around, and they’ll be in and out of their walk-ins.”

“Good point, Junior Suit,” Moz said, and eliminated seven of the locations on the list.

“How many of these places are open? I mean, are they all still in business?” Peter asked.

“We could cross reference them with tax records, maybe?” Jones answered.

“Another reason to remain off the grid,” Mozzie muttered as he transferred the data to Jones’ laptop to check it out.

All but three had paid employee taxes in the previous quarter.

“Three. There are three,” Peter muttered and began to pace.

“We can probably factor out the one in Bridgeport – there’s no way they’d have taken him that far from the city,” Diana pointed out.

“Two. We can work with two. We have the bomb squads on standby?” Peter asked.

She nodded. “And paramedics – just waiting for our call.”

Peter stared at the two remaining pins on the virtual map onscreen, then over at the image of Neal in the lower left corner. He was crouched down again, rocking back and forth. There were two addresses – one a defunct Portuguese restaurant in Newark, the other some TV chef’s failed steakhouse on the Upper West Side. Peter stepped closer to the screen, and for the first time really noticed the racks in the walk-in. They had stainless steel trays on them, like he’d seen at the steakhouse El had taken him to for his last birthday. They’d been allowed to choose their steaks, had been shown the dry aging room the restaurant had on the premises, just off the kitchen. Neal had to be there.

“I’ll lead the team at the steakhouse. Jones – you head to Newark. We’ll keep in constant contact. Let’s move – we are running out of time.”

Everyone scrambled from the room except Peter and Moz; Peter could feel the other man come up behind him and stare at the same image of their friend on the screen.

Moz’s voice was barely audible. “You save him, Peter.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s what I do,” he replied, squaring his shoulders, and left the room without a backward glance.

\----

Peter held his breath as the bomb squad tech defused the wiring that snaked around the door handle and locking mechanism of the steakhouse’s walk-in freezer. It was apparently poorly done and a piece of cake, and Peter was just going to have to take the guy’s word for it. He hovered behind him, watching his actions like a hawk, prepared to move in as soon as the door was secured.

The restaurant was deserted, and they’d found no clues that anyone had been around for weeks except a jimmied rear door when they’d stormed the place. Peter would take the time to be relieved about that when they had Neal safe.

The bomb tech finished his work and stepped back. Peter moved forward, grabbing the handle and turning it. “Hey wait, we’ll want to make sure there aren’t any other booby traps,” the tech warned him, but Peter ignored him and strode into the walk-in freezer.

Neal wasn’t where he thought he’d be. He’d spent much of the day near the wall opposite the camera, always in view, and Peter felt a surge of panic when he didn’t see him there. He looked around frantically, and found him in the far corner, curled up in a ball beneath a stainless steel work table. He rushed over, got down on his knees. “Neal?” He reached out and touched him on the shoulder – he was wearing only a tank top and boxers, and Neal flinched away as if the touch burned him. It was alarming, but at least he was alive.

Peter stood and grabbed one end of the table, gestured at one of the paramedics that were entering the room, leading a stretcher behind him. “Help me get this off of him.” Peter and the medic lifted the table off of Neal. Peter crouched down again, tried to straighten Neal out. He noticed he could see puffs of air as people breathed in the cold, humid air of the walk-in, but Neal was not shivering. His skin was blue and strangely puffy. His eyes, though open, weren’t looking at anything in particular, and Peter noticed how dilated the pupils were – alarmingly so. “Neal?” he repeated.

“Don’t jar him too much,” the paramedic warned, crouching down beside Peter.

Peter removed his hands but did not back away. The paramedic began evaluating Neal, calling out vital signs to his partner as he went. Neal was unresponsive when they tried to talk to him.

“Neal – can you hear us?” Peter tried to rouse him himself, in case a familiar voice would work.

Eventually, they were ready to move him, and Peter helped them lift Neal onto the waiting stretcher.

“Sorry,” Neal whispered as they began to roll him out of there, the first time Peter had heard his voice in more than 24 hours.

“What?”

“Tell Peter…’m sorry.”

“No, buddy, there’s nothing to be sorry for,” Peter began to say as they rolled him out, keeping pace with the stretcher as it moved.

“I’m sorry. Tell him.”

“Don’t be, don’t be,” Peter told him, putting a hand on Neal’s chest. They’d arrived at the ambulance and the medics were going to need to lift him in.

Neal grabbed Peter’s hand and clutched at it weakly, but he didn’t really look at him. “Tell Peter I’m sorry I gave up on him. Tell him.”

Peter watched as they loaded Neal into the ambulance, shocked into silence by Neal’s words.

\----

The ER was waiting for them when they arrived, a virtual army of doctors, nurses and interns ready with warming blankets and solutions to treat Neal’s hypothermia. A nurse reported that Neal’s core body temperature was at an alarmingly low 86°F, and the doctors wanted to use a dialysis machine to warm his blood up externally. As his listed emergency medical contact – another surprising development in a day filled with them – Peter was asked if he could make medical decisions on Neal’s behalf. He reluctantly agreed.

The charge nurse, Patty, also told Peter that Neal’s condition was still very touch-and-go. While he’d fortunately been found before a coma had set in, there were risks of cardiac complications as they rewarmed him, and so they’d have to move slowly.

“But please, you’ll come and give us updates when you can?” Peter asked her, his face a mask of worry.

She took in the large group of concerned friends and co-workers that were congregating near the coffee machine – Peter noticed that his agents had formed a protective semi-circle around Moz and Sara and were trying to comfort them even through their own worry – and smiled. “Don’t you worry, Agent Burke,” she said, patting him on the hand, “you’ll know when I know.”

Peter sat alone in the waiting room, away from the tense knot of FBI staff and friends, lost in thought over the last thing Neal had said to him. Tell Peter I’m sorry I gave up on him. What had that meant?

It was easy to guess what that meant, really – scared, freezing and probably hallucinating, Neal had clearly given up hope of ever being rescued, then felt guilty about it. The thought brought tears. That Neal had such faith in him ought to have made him feel closer to his friend. But in fact it only intensified the guilt he felt over giving up earlier in the day. How did he deserve Neal’s faith in him when he’d lost it himself? This was a burden Peter would carry with him always, he thought. He had to fight back a sudden urge to scream and punch a wall in his frustration over this realization.

And he had a sudden all-consuming urge to see his friend and apologize for his lapse.

Peter went over to the nurse’s station and found Patty instructing a young trainee on a computer program. She looked up at his approach and, seeing his expression, immediately came from behind the desk to address him. “Agent Burke, what is it?”

“Please, I know it’s probably not allowed, but I’ve got to see Neal, I’ve got to. There’s something I need to tell him, something he needs to know. Is there any way – if only for a minute…..”

Patty smiled kindly. “I’m not sure his doctor would agree, but I think it’d be OK if someone were with him.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “And if this were some sort of official federal business, or if the patient was in need of protection…”

Peter caught on immediately. “Well, someone did try to kill him today.”

“There you have it,” she said, and ushered him through the security door to the main area of the emergency department.

Neal was lying in a small treatment room made even more claustrophobic by the sheer amount of medical equipment that had been jammed into it. An oxygen mask obscured the lower half of his face and multiple tubes and wires led into and out of places Peter didn’t want to know about, which were thankfully obscured by the heavy warming blankets that covered him.

“He’s sleeping,” Patty observed. “So, try not to wake him. He may be a little…confused, but that’s temporary. And it’s normal to have short-term memory loss in these cases, so don’t be alarmed.”

Peter nodded and thanked her as she left. He stood close to Neal’s bed and looked down on him. He was alarmingly pale, but thankfully, the blue tint had left his skin. “Hey, buddy,” Peter said, feeling suddenly awkward. “You’re um, you’re safe now.”

His voice must have somehow gotten through, because Neal stirred. Peter felt a small thrill of relief at the thought that his friend was responding to his presence, followed by a twinge of guilt that he’d disturbed him. His need to apologize suddenly seemed silly and a little selfish.

Neal opened his eyes and blinked as if his eyelids were too heavy, but when he saw Peter his lips parted in a wide smile. Peter smiled back, overcome with relief and emotion to see that his partner recognized him. “Hey,” he said, leaning in closer and putting his hand on top of Neal’s head fondly. It was about all he trusted himself to say at the moment; tears had come unbidden to his eyes. “Hey.”

“What happened?” Neal said. His hand fought its way clear of the heavy blankets and pulled the oxygen mask away.

“You were trapped in a walk-in freezer.”

Neal blinked. “No, seriously.”

Peter shrugged. “Just another day in the life of Neal Caffrey.”

“I need a different life.”

“Yeah, the one you’ve got’s taken years off of mine, let me tell ya.”

Neal just looked at him. “Is it cold in here, or is it me?”

“Uh, it’s you,” Peter chided, but saw that he really was confused. “You have a severe case of hypothermia,” he reminded him.

“Oh, yeah. I’m so tired.”

“You should sleep.”

“Don’t go, OK? It’s safer when you’re there.”

Peter suddenly felt warm all over. “I – thanks for saying that.”

“Peter Burke will always find me,” Neal whispered as he closed his eyes, and soon he was sleeping.

Peter removed his hand from Neal’s head and replaced the oxygen mask, then stood leaning against the bed, intending to keep him company as long as he could while he slept. “Yep, I will always find you Neal. No matter what. No matter what.”

\----

Two days later, Peter stood outside Neal’s hospital room in the cardiac care unit, where he was being kept as a precaution for a few days following his ordeal. He was sitting up in his bed as Sara fed him grapefruit segments from his lunch tray.

“Want some Jell-o?” she asked.

Neal made a face. “Ick.”

She picked it up and waved it enticingly in front of his nose. “You sure? It’s green-flavored. They even put some non-dairy whipped topping on there for you. Yum-yum-yum.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Come on, there’s always room for Jell-o,” Peter said from where he stood, and both of them looked up.

“Peter!” Neal said, a large grin on his face.

Sara rose and offered him her chair. “I need to be going,” she said. “I’ve got a meeting across town in an hour.” She kissed Neal briefly and promised to be back in time for dinner. “I hear it’s vegetable lasagna tonight,” she enthused mockingly. Neal stuck out his tongue and she laughed her way to the door. “Or if you’re a good boy, the sea bass from Le Bernardin.”

“I’ll be very good,” Neal promised, sitting up straighter and wiggling a little in place. She laughed again and left.

Peter crossed to Neal’s side and sat down. “How ya doin’ today? You good?” he said, standing over Neal and fussing with the edges of his blanket, smoothing it out over his legs.

“I’m good,” Neal answered, watching him. “I can almost feel all my fingers and toes. Who knew that could be a monumental achievement?”

“Have you remembered anything today?” If Neal regained any of his memories, it could resolve the case more quickly. Peter needed to feel like his friend could be safe; he hadn’t been able to relax fully for three days now.

“I have.” Neal began to play with a loose string on the light blanket that covered him. “Little snippets. I remember someone coming up to me and asking for a dollar for the subway, and then someone grabbed me from behind. The faces are fuzzy, but… they were white guys? One of them had a lisp. He kept saying ‘freether.’”

Peter nodded. “I suppose that could help.”

“Any leads yet?”

Peter nodded. “A few. We know who the hacker they used was. Just have to track him down, and from there it ought to be easy.”

With Sally’s help – and at a hefty fee – the FBI were able to identify the person behind the signature Mozzie found within the code that manipulated Neal’s anklet data, and were well on their way to finding the perpetrators. Peter thought it was most likely a known enemy of Neal’s like Keller or Wilkes, looking to settle a score. He wasn’t entirely convinced they wouldn’t still try something, so he had spent the better part of the last two nights with Neal; Moz, a confirmed night owl, took the graveyard shifts with Sara’s baton in his pocket just in case.

“Remember anything else?” Peter prodded.

Neal was suddenly evasive. “It’s not really significant. It’s more like a feeling, really.” He had pulled about eight inches of the string out of the blanket, and had it wrapped tightly around his finger.

“What? Anything important?”

“It’s kind of embarrassing, really,” Neal admitted, but when he glanced up at Peter, his eyes were wide, and Peter saw he was upset. He pulled some more on the string.

Peter put a hand on his, saving the blanket from certain destruction. “Stop that. What is it, Neal?

“I – it – I –“ He took a deep breath. “Never mind.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t. It’s like a betrayal.”

“Betrayal? Neal, you can’t cover for these people. They almost killed you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then tell me. How can I help you if you won’t tell me?”

“Fine. Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He took another breath and began to speak, but couldn’t really meet Peter’s eyes as he did. “I remember that when I was in there, all I could think about was that you would come and find me.”

“I will always find you, Neal,” Peter said, putting a hand on his shoulder. It was like a mantra for him lately, he thought.

His words seemed to disturb Neal. “But it took such a long time,” he continued, “and, well, after a while I began to think that maybe you couldn’t, and it bothers me that I did. It feels like I lost faith in you.”

Peter held up a hand. “Never apologize for that, Neal,” he said. “Even I lost faith for a while there, and it just kills me. This whole thing – I’ve never been so scared in my entire life, you know? There came a point when I was convinced we’d fail. I gave up – on you, on me, and it was the blackest moment in my life. So if anyone deserves an apology, it’s you. Please forgive me.”

They sat in an uneasy silence for several minutes, each alone with his thoughts.

Neal was the first to break the silence – with a snort of laughter. “So here we are apologizing to each other for having perfectly normal reactions to an extremely stressful situation,” he pointed out.

“We’re ridiculous,” Peter agreed, taking a deep breath and finally feeling relaxed for the first time in days. Neal was on the mend and things were going to get back to normal – of this he was certain. “You sure you don’t want that Jell-o?” he asked.

“Not even if you paid me,” Neal said, and Peter grabbed a spoon.

\----

Thank you for your time.

**Author's Note:**

> * Many thanks to my pal Elrhiarhodan for the beta
> 
> * Title is from the following quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:   
> “Set honor in one eye and death i' the other  
> And I will look on both indifferently.” 
> 
> * Note that I’m no techie, so I am sure the tech speak in this story is a load of horseshit – just go with it, OK?


End file.
